Varadero-Boca de Jaruco Power Plants

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Sherrit International entered into a joint-venture with the Cuban government to build and operate the power plants at Varadero and Boca de Jaruco. Sherrit International created Sherrit Power Corp. in which it holds 49.7% of the shares, and the remaining stake was floated in the Canadian Stock Market. Sherrit Power, in turn, holds a 33% stake in Energas, the company created to build and operate the facilities (the remaining 67% of Energas is held by the government). The project was undertaken in multiple phases. The first and second phases, built at the Varadero facility, involved the installation of generators with combined capacity of 98 MW. The third phase involved the construction of the Boca de Jaruco power plant, which has a capacity of 33 MW and commenced operations in Aug. 1999. The fourth phase, commissioned in March 2000, involved the addition of 20 MW of capacity to the Varadero facility. The fifth phase, which began operations in March 2003, added 75 MW of capacity at Varadero by converting the existing generators to a combined cycle format. The total cost of the first five phases was estimated at US$ 150 million. Construction of a sixth phase - a US$116 million, 85 MW expansion of the Boca de Jaruco facility - commenced in 2004 and was commissioned in early 2006. The seventh phase - a US$60 million, 65 MW expansion of the Boca de Jaruco facility - began in 2006 and was commissioned in the second quarter of 2007. As of December 2008, Energas had suspended its plan for an eighth phase, which would have added a 150 MW combined cycle unit to the Boca de Jaruco plant.